PART 1: Select any company and think about its buying and selling activities -- everyone buys and sells, or at least "procures" and "supplies", or otherwise participates in exchange transactions.
Please address the following questions in a 2 page double spaced paper
Question 1. Who are the organization's' clients/customers? What products and/or services do you supply to them?
Question 2. What factors affect demand for the organization's products/services? Could it respond if demand increased? Is it in a position to create such increased demand?
Question 3. Who are the organization's' principal suppliers? What products and/or services do you acquire from them?
Question 4. What factors affect your demand for outside products/services? Can you get what you need when you need it, at acceptable cost?
Question 5. Pick one recent transaction, either a sale or a purchase, of some significant amount, with which you are at least somewhat familiar. Describe it -- what it was, how it came about, who was involved, how it worked, and the degree of satisfaction of both sides with the outcome. Was it a truly reciprocal transaction, or more one-sided? How much interaction was there in carrying the transaction through? Does it represent any sort of long-term or emerging relationship, or is it strictly a one-time commercial transaction. Why, in either case?
Question 6. To what degree do you find it helpful to apply economic thinking to the transaction behavior of this organization? Does this kind of thinking give you any new insights into the organization and how it works? Why or why not?
PART 2:
Please use the organization selected in Part 1. Think about the structure of the market in which it operates. Who are the other players? To what degree is the market concentrated? Are there any big players? How does competition operate in it?
Please address the following questions in a 2 page double spaced paper
Question 1. Discuss the structure of the market of your reference organization? Is it characterized as close to a 'perfect competition', or close to a monopoly or to a competition among few?
Question 2. What are the major products that your organization buys from outside suppliers? How does it choose its suppliers? How does it decide what prices to pay?
Question 3. What are the major products that your organization sells or otherwise provides to outside buyers? How does it choose its buyers? How does it decide what prices to charge? (As we said, if you're not using a for-profit company here, you may need to be a little creative in how you interpret this question, but I'm sure you can come up with analogs.)
Question 4. What are the adaptations that your organization has made to the structure of its market? How does the organization cope with its position in the economic "food chain"?